Will the campaign benefit from more time and money, or will supporters be able to use the still-raw sting of last year’s defeat to propel them to victory?
The numbers are tantalizing: Proposition 8 won by 2 percentage points.
That’s close enough that the outcome could be affected simply by getting more same-sex marriage supporters to register and vote, says Laguna Beach political maven Fred Karger.
There are good arguments on both sides of the timing issue, and it appears voters just might have the opportunity to vote on it in 2010. That is, if enough signatures can be gathered between now and April. But that’s a big if.
If that were to happen, it would be the first time unpaid volunteer signature-gatherers had ever accomplished such a feat, Karger said.
Money is the mother’s milk of politics, and much as he would like to, Karger doesn’t see the money coming in to drive the 2010 ballot measure over the threshold.
“It takes $2 million to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot,” Karger said. “We need to be able to hire professional signature-gatherers. It is a necessity.”
But don’t tell that to Laguna Beach activist Audrey Prosser, who is leading the charge to organize volunteers to gather signatures for a 2010 ballot measure.
At a party last weekend at the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club, she says 100 people turned out and six signed up to gather signatures.
That’s not a huge number of volunteers, but it’s a start.
Prosser married her partner during the six-month window of blissful marriage equality between the state Supreme Court decision of June 1 and the Nov. 4 election, which slammed the door on many couples’ wedding dreams.
She led a march of about a thousand-strong through the streets of Laguna Beach to protest Proposition 8, and she is not backing down in keeping the fight alive and kicking.
